More on USC troubles

Some more interesting stuff out there this afternoon on the new developments with the USC basketball program so we’ll get right to it. …
— The Orange County Register has a good interview with one of the authors of the Yahoo.com story, Charles Robinson. Robinson makes a lot of interesting points, including laying out a possible time line for when something may happen. He also kind of shoots down the idea that there are any great implications behind the notion the NCAA “combined” the investigations of Tim Floyd-O.J. Mayo and Reggie Bush making the logical point that it’s really just one big investigation into USC and has been all along.
Robinson also discusses some of why this has taken so long — it was April 2006 when the NCAA first began looking into the Bush stuff. I have to admit I don’t really get the outrage over the length of the investigation. I just listened to some call-in segments on this on KJR-AM and all anyone seemed bothered about is how long the investigation is taking. I would think the longer this takes is only bad news for USC — it means the NCAA is trying to cross every T and dot every I and all of that. I know during UW investigations there was always a concern on-campus that the longer it took meant more time to dig up more stuff. And as we’ve discussed on here, this is also all pretty complicated in terms of trying to get the proper documentation of everything —- with some recent lawsuits that have come the NCAA’s way (notably Rick Neuheisel’s) it makes more sense than ever for the NCAA to make sure it’s being as careful and diligent as possible. I don’t really get why that keeps being perceived as a whitewash. I don’t know how anyone can judge that until the investigation is concluded.
— ESPN’s Andy Katz talks with Arizona AD Jim Livengood who predictably downplays the notion that the Wildcats dodged a bullet by not hiring Floyd, saying it was never really that close to begin with.
— The Arizona Republic, however, points out all the ways that the Wildcats are lucky that it didn’t work out with Floyd.
— Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News notes how costly one year of Mayo could be for the Trojans, as well as looking at a lot of other sides of the case.
All for now.